Ringing the Alarm

By the time that Terrick and Tasha find the other party members, Althea has already finished healing both Ellie and Bryce. The two returning members take no time to tell the others what they saw. They all knew what this meant. A beast stampede was happening and its three days away from Kauven. They need to warn the Council of Kauven to mobilize the defense of the city.

Unanimously, they picked Tasha to run back to the city. Using her Wind speed, she can reach Kauven before tonight. The remaining members will try to collect information then find a strategic place to stall the stampede.

Bryce uses Dark shadow to enter the encampment and try to gather information. The shadow is a literal silhouette of Bryce that allows him to hear and see everything the shadow can. An Arachne seems to be the leader and is calling all the shots in the planning of the stampede. There were also a lot of Generals and Beast Lords. Once they were able to confirm that the stampede was indeed coming to Kauven, the grants leave quickly to find a safe place to slow down the beast march. They find a gorge where the stampede would be forced to file into a handful of rows. This would allow them to slow down the beasts. The group finds a nearby rock formation where they begin making plans.

Meanwhile, Tasha is using her Wind speed to run as fast as she can. She thanked her lucky stars that the whole party was able to level up to C rank after killing the foxes. The rank up from D to C means a triple increase in mana. If she wasn't a C rank, she would have run out of steam hours ago. She will be arriving at the basic hunting grounds soon. She was hoping to inform the other new grants who could help her disseminate the information about the beast stampede. Luckily, 14 of the new grants were there, not to mention 20 of the more seasoned adventurers. Tasha quickly briefs them on the issue and the adventurers all decide to provide support to the party members that were left in the forest. Tasha gives them their general location and they leave immediately. One of the seasoned adventurers accompanies Tasha to the city. Once inside, the adventurer named Koi Tubbs peels off and heads to the adventurer's guild to get help. Tasha heads straight to the Council Office. Luckily, the Water master of the industrial guild was there. As soon as Gil Pelagos hears about the threat, he presses a button in the meeting room. An alarm was triggered through out Kauven. The council members drop what they are doing and rush to the Council Office, where the alarm was triggered.

Koi had just briefed guild master Hunter when the alarm went off. Hunter tells Alana to initiate the emergency subjugation protocols. Alana enters a series of commands in her monitor and approximately 40% of Kauven receives this message through their embedded crystal. These people may seem like ordinary citizens but they are the retired adventurers living in Kauven. They immediately rush to their homes to get their weapons and armors. An hour later they are all expected to be at the city entrance.

Back in the Council Office, all the Council members of Kauven have congregated and have just finished the discussion of the subjugation and the city's protection. They were all in combat ready outfit and are headed towards the great entrance of Kauven. The druids could be seen standing on top of the city walls. Wentlas jumps and lands on top of a tall tower. He begins chanting and a giant magic circle appears on top of the city. The other druids also join in and a complicated, multi-tiered magic circle starts rotating. 5 minutes later, the city walls begin to glow with blue runes that coalesce into pillars of light connecting to the hovering magic circle. The spaces in between are filled with even more runes and ancient characters. Finally, the lights all disappear and in its place is a giant dome shield encompassing all of Kauven.

Wentlas rejoins the waiting Council and they walk out of the great entrance in a hurry. Once outside, they glow the color of their respective blessings while releasing waves of powerful mana. All of a sudden, they look like meteorites darting over the forest. A second later, they are gone. The assistant head druid is left to oversee the maintenance of the dome shield. The active adventurers have started congregating and will be leaving soon. The retired adventurers will be here in less than an hour and will leave soon after that.

Mistress Juliette found Tasha sitting just outside of the Council building. She has used up all of her mana to maintain her Wind speed spell for hours. It will take her time to recover enough mana for the return trip to her friends. The moment Tasha sees Mistress Juliette, tears start to fall from her eyes. She hasn't allowed herself to feel and be scared. The nun holds her dearly and comforts her. White light covers the both of them as the motherly nun reinvigorates Tasha with mana. To Tasha's surprise, her mana quickly recovers and is ready to leave soon enough.

Tasha has never realized how powerful Mistress Juliette truly is. Even though most of the time, the nun seems to live a quiet and peaceful life running the orphanage, graciously admonishing the kids on occasion. However before she retired, Juliette had a reputation for being one of the most intimidating personages in the Dearth Kingdom. She primarily was at the employ of the Royal family running clandestine missions. In fact, she was known as the A rank adventurer, Death's Light. Her forte was assassinations and torture. Today, she is Death's Light once again in order to save her children.

Tasha notices that Mistress Juliette isn't wearing her usual religious garb. Instead, she is in skin tight leather, speed boosting boots, and high ponytail. As soon as Tasha fully recovers her mana, they leave Kauven and head to the general direction of where her other "siblings" were. Even though Tasha is using her Wind speed, Mistress Juliette doesn't seem to have any problem keeping up with her. Perhaps it is the speed boost from the boots, she thought. Actually, an A rank adventurer could easily maintain this kind of speed. Mistress Juliette is also capable of using Light speed which is more effective than the Wind speed spell. If she casted it, she would be too fast for Tasha to keep up with. Finally, the boots that the nun is wearing is from a Gryphon's hide, an animal material known for giving speed buffs. Any one of these three facts can explain the how she can keep up with Tasha. The fact that she is using only the boots could mean just three things: First, she is in a hurry to save her children. Second, she is efficiently saving her mana for the upcoming battle with the beasts. Third, there will be hell to pay!